We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till
nearly ten o’clock; then we slid by, pretty
wide away from the town, and didn’t hoist our
lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.
When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the
morning, he says:
“Huck, does you reck’n we gwyne to run
acrost any mo’ kings on dis trip?”
“No,” I says, “I reckon not.”
“Well,” says he, “dat’s all
right, den. I doan’ mine one er two kings,
but dat’s enough. Dis one’s powerful
drunk, en de duke ain’ much better.”
I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French,
so he could hear what it was like; but he said he
had been in this country so long, and had so much
trouble, he’d forgot it.
It was after sun-up now, but we went right on
and didn’t tie up. The king and the duke
turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after
they’d jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered
them up a good deal. After breakfast the king
he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled
off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his
legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable,
and lit his pipe, and went to getting his Romeo and
Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good
him and the duke begun to practice it together.
The duke had to learn him over and over again how
to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put
his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he
done it pretty well; “only,” he says,
“you mustn’t bellow out Romeo! that
way, like a bull—you must say it soft and
sick and languishy, so—R-o-o-meo! that
is the idea; for Juliet’s a dear sweet mere child
of a girl, you know, and she doesn’t bray like
a jackass.”
Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that
the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice
the sword fight—the duke called himself
Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced
around the raft was grand to see. But by and
by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after
that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds
of adventures they’d had in other times along
the river.
After dinner the duke says:
“Well, Capet, we’ll want to make this
a first-class show, you know, so I guess we’ll
add a little more to it. We want a little something
to answer encores with, anyway.”
“What’s onkores, Bilgewater?”
The duke told him, and then says:
“I’ll answer by doing the Highland fling
or the sailor’s hornpipe; and you—well,
let me see—oh, I’ve got it—you
can do Hamlet’s soliloquy.”
“Hamlet’s which?”
“Hamlet’s soliloquy, you know; the most
celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it’s
sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house.
I haven’t got it in the book—I’ve
only got one volume—but I reckon I can piece
it out from memory. I’ll just walk up
and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from
recollection’s vaults.”
